Kiss & Tell

by Layce Gardner

  What she saw couldn’t have been more surprising.

  An old woman was hunched over the front counter with a stack of books in front of her. The woman picked up a book, read its spine aloud, “Pride and Prejudice!” and threw it out the doorway. Willy ducked just in time to not be clobbered by Jane Austin. The book sailed past Willy, its pages flapping like an injured bird’s wings, and hit the middle of the street where it bounced a few times and was flattened by a taxi.

  Willy counted to three, jumped inside the store, ran at the woman and tackled her.

  That might have been a bit of an overreaction on Willy’s part, but she’d be damned if she was going to get nailed by another dead author.

  The old woman hit the floor with a whumpf , her dress ballooned over her head, and her false teeth jumped out of her mouth.

  Willy disarmed the old woman by snatching the book out of her hand. It was a hard-backed copy of Lady Chatterly’s Lover. While the old woman fought her way to her feet, Willy found the woman’s teeth wedged in between two books on a nearby shelf. She studied the dentures. Nice work. A little before her time, but whoever made them knew what they were doing. She handed the teeth to the woman, saying, “Here’s your teeth. Which, by the way, are an exceptionally nice piece of workmanship and you’ve taken good care of them. Sorry about tackling you like that, but you had to be stopped. If I didn’t have such a hard head you might’ve killed me.”

  The woman popped her teeth back in her mouth, sucked them into place and eyeballed Willy. “Do you read?” she finally asked.

  “I may look homeless, but these aren’t my clothes. Of course I can read,” Willy said haughtily.

  “I wasn’t casting aspersions on your education,” the old woman said. “I didn’t ask if you can read, I asked if you did read. For pleasure. For enjoyment.”

  Willy shrugged. Where was this conversation going? “Yes.”

  The woman approached her. She stood toe-to-toe with Willy and peered upward into her eyes. “Do you read a book or do you read on one of those tablet thingies?”

  “You mean a Kindle?”

  The woman clapped her hands over her ears. “Don’t say that word!”

  “Oh. Okay,” Willy whispered. She was obviously dealing with a crazy person. She looked around. Maybe the woman had a phone somewhere. She could call the cops to haul her away. Of course, then she’d have to explain why she was in a store with no ID in her pocket, no money, wearing clothes that weren’t hers, and throwing old women to the floor. On second thought, she should leave. Willy walked toward the door.

  She almost made it out the door, too, but Paradise Lost clobbered her on the head. Willy whirled around to face the old woman. “Stop doing that! Stop throwing books! You’re going to kill somebody!” Willy rubbed the newest knot on her head. “Namely me.”

  “What do I care?” the old woman shouted. “My business is gone. Kaput! Dead! Finished! Over!”

  Willy was intrigued. There was a part of her—hidden deep down in the darkest recesses of her soul—that had always dreamed of owning a bookstore. When she was a teenager she had daydreamed about someday being surrounded by old musty books that creaked when you opened them. She would bury herself in the stories, wrap them around her like a shawl, and never come up for air.

  “This is a great bookstore,” Willy said, looking around. Stacks and stacks of books teetered this way and tottered that way. It was a bookworm’s paradise.

  The old woman sank into an overstuffed chair and sighed. “It was a great bookstore.”

  “Was?”

  “Ebooks have killed it.”

  “You know,” Willy said, “video killed the radio star.”

  The old woman sat up straighter. “What does that mean?”

  Willy leaned against the doorjamb. “It means things change. It wasn’t that long ago that people thought paperbacks would be the death of books. But they weren’t. In fact, paperback books made reading accessible to poor people and readership grew all over the world. Maybe ebooks will do the same thing. You have to learn to roll with the changes, that’s all.”

  “Hmmph,” the old woman snorted. “You want to prove that theory?”

  “How?”

  “Buy this bookstore.”

  Willy laughed. “I can’t. I don’t have one cent. These aren’t even my clothes. I don’t have a job. I’m basically homeless.”

  The old woman shooed her out the door with a wave of her hand. “Get out. You’re no good. You young kids all you know is take, take, take.”

  Willy turned and left. She was halfway down the street before she realized she was holding the Complete Works of Charles Dickens in her hand. Oh well, she thought, maybe she’d get arrested and thrown in jail. At least she’d have someplace to sleep that night.

  Willy was walking by The Bourgeois Pig when three things happened simultaneously that caused her to walk inside and sit at a table by the window. The first thing was that her stomach growled and she realized that she hadn’t eaten a thing since half a bagel that morning. The second thing was that she saw an un-bussed table by the window with an uneaten, untouched sandwich on a plate. The third thing was that Willy was so hungry, tired, and downtrodden that she no longer gave a shit if she got thrown out of a restaurant or hauled off to jail.

  So Willy walked inside the bistro, made a beeline straight for the table, sat, and scarfed down the sandwich in three big bites.

  And nobody saw her do it.

  That is… nobody except Allistair.

  A Case of Mistaken Identity

  Allistair could not believe her eyes. 0699 was not a thing like she had thought she would be.

  Allistair had been hurrying down the sidewalk outside The Bourgeois Pig and she came to a screeching halt when she saw the woman sitting at the window table shove a sandwich into her mouth and swallow without chewing. Allistair watched as the woman hoovered the sandwich and then belched. A smear of bright yellow mustard was left on her upper lip.

  Allistair tail-spun into immediate denial. That couldn’t be 0699. Her 0699 didn’t eat like a pig. Her 0699 didn’t wear what appeared to be a man’s bowling shirt on a first date. She also didn’t have a mustard mustache or belch at the table.

  Then the woman at the window table opened a big book and began reading. Allistair gasped. It was 0699! She was holding a book and sitting by a window table just like she had said she would be.

  Allistair sucked it up and strode through the door. She had to see what this woman was like. After all they had been flirting and having a virtual romance for six months. One little faux pas like bad table manners shouldn’t change her opinion about 0699.

  “Hi,” Allistair said, looking down at the top of 0699’s head.

  0699 looked up from her reading. “Hi,” she said with a perplexed look on her face.

  When 0699 didn’t say anything else, Allistair took it upon herself to pull out a chair and sit across the table.

  “Have a seat,” 0699 said dryly.

  Allistair laughed. “Oh, you. You have a great sense of humor.”

  0699 raised an eyebrow. “You can tell that by one measly little sentence? By the way, who the hell are you?”

  Allistair tilted her head in the universal signal of confusion. She decided to let it go. They were both nervous. It was only natural for there to be a few confusing moments at first.

  “I’m your date, silly. Did you eat already?” Allistair asked, looking at the empty plate.

  0699 nodded.

  “Well, I haven’t eaten since this morning. Rhonda, my boss, the one I told you about? She handed me her seminal masterpiece, as she called it, and I had to piece it together in order to make tomorrow’s deadline.”

  0699 slowly nodded.

  Allistair continued, “I swear that woman never met a comma she didn’t like.”

  Allistair waited for 0699 to laugh, chuckle, chortle, giggle, anything. But 0699 only stared at her. Allistair thought there was something off about 0699, but she couldn
’t quite put her finger on it. Maybe it was the fact that she wasn’t blinking. She just stared at her with those big blue eyes. Her brown hair was curly, cut short, and was piled on top of her head like Lyle Lovett’s. It was a bold fashion choice. But it worked for her, Allistair decided. And she was a little on the butch side. She probably wouldn’t be caught dead in a dress or carrying a purse. But that was okay, too. In fact, Allistair liked that. It made her feel more womanly and protected. She knew that was sexist but it was also the truth. Not that she would ever admit that out loud. She’d probably have her lesbian membership card revoked.

  Allistair decided that all in all, despite the mustard mustache and horrific table manners, she was intrigued enough to continue on with the date. “My name is Allistair,” she said.

  0699 smiled. She had a really nice smile. Gorgeous teeth, too. “My name is Willy,” 0699 said.

  “Willy? That’s an unusual name,” Allistair said.

  “Not really. There’s Willy Wonka, Free Willy, Willie Nelson, Willie Mays…”

  “Willy Cather,” Allistair interjected.

  “That’s Willa Cather,” Willy said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure. I was an English Lit major in college. University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.”

  Allison smiled tightly. “You told me you went to Harvard.”

  Willy scooted back in her chair and stood. “Excuse me, I have to go to the bathroom.” She walked away, holding her pants up with one hand.

  Allistair frowned. Baggy pants must be making a comeback, she thought.

  ***

  Once in the bathroom, Willy splashed cold water on her face and looked at herself in the mirror. “Who the fuck is that? She thinks I’m her date?”

  Willy couldn’t believe she was talking to her own reflection. She had read books where protagonists talked to themselves in the mirror and she always pooh-pooh’ed it as implausible and stupid. But now here she was just like Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, saying “You talkin’ to me?” And look what happened there. John Hinkley Jr. fell in love with Jodie Foster as a baby whore then went on to shoot Reagan to impress Jodie and now he’s in prison and Jodie won’t ever talk about him.

  Let that be a lesson to me, Willy thought. That’s what happens to people who chat up their own reflection.

  Willy went into the first stall and sat on the toilet. She had read somewhere that the stall closest to the door was the least used and, therefore, the cleanest. That was why she always used the first stall. She had read in the same article that if you went to an amusement park you should always walk to the left. Most people went to the right. If you went to the left you would miss most of the crowd. She hadn’t been to an amusement park recently so she had yet to try that theory out.

  And what did any of this have to do with the predicament she was now in? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It was sheer avoidance. Willy didn’t want to think about the predicament she was in. How was she going to get out of this? She had to think, think, think…

  Okay, problem number one: She didn’t have a place to stay tonight or maybe forever.

  Problem number two: She didn’t have any clothes, transportation, or even a toothbrush.

  Problem number three: There was a woman sitting at that table out there who seemed to think they were dating.

  The answer was obvious. She could worm her way into the woman’s confidence, make her think she really did know her, get her to take her home with her and then problems number one and number two would be taken care of. At least for the immediate future. And it wasn’t like Allistair wasn’t attractive. She was easy on the eyes in a Type A sort of way.

  Willy washed her hands and face again, ran a wet hand through her hair, and tried to look as presentable as possible under the given circumstances. She wiped her face with the coarse brown paper towel and gave herself an underarm sniff test. She didn’t stink too badly. She winked at her reflection in the mirror and sauntered out the door bolder than Travis Bickle. She was bound and determined to make this Allistair woman fall in love with her.

  ***

  By the time Willy sauntered back over to the table, Allistair was ready to leave. It was obvious, to her at least, that this wasn’t going to work. Why should she waste an entire evening trying to make small talk and let 0699 down easy when there was a pint of ice cream at home with her name written on it?

  Willy was all smiles when she sat back down. “Would you like a coffee? Or something a bit stronger?” Without waiting for an answer, Willy waved at the waitress.

  Allistair hated it when people flagged down a waitress. It seemed so rude. Like the poor waiter wasn’t already working their butt off, now they had people adding to their workload. It was very inconsiderate. And symptomatic of a society that was so used to instant gratification they thought a microwave took too long.

  “I think I should be going,” Allistair said.

  “No, please,” Willy begged. She did that puppy dog thing with her big blue eyes.

  “Well…” Allistair wavered.

  “Please? Give me another chance.”

  “Okay,” Allistair said. After all, the ice cream wasn’t going anywhere.

  “So…” Willy said. “Tell me something about yourself.”

  Allistair frowned. “Well… what would you like to know?”

  “I don’t know. Tell me about your favorite toy as a kid,” Willy said.

  “Well,” Allistair hemmed, “I guess I really liked my Monopoly board game. I played it for hours and hours all by myself.” She giggled. “I always won.”

  “I love Monopoly!” Willy said a touch too enthusiastically. She toned it down a notch, hoping to sound more realistic, “I was always the shoe.”

  “I was the iron,” Allistair said. “I still love to iron things. I love creases and edges. You know how when you vacuum the carpet and it leaves the clean path behind it? I love that, too.”

  Willy noted the creases in Allistair’s pants and shirtsleeves. “Yeah, ironing. Lotsa fun.”

  The waitress, a heroin chic girl with not one but two rings in her nose finally arrived despite Willy flagging her down. She held a small ticket book in front of her. “Ready to order?”

  “I’ll have a coffee and a BLT,” Willy said.

  “I thought you were a vegetarian,” Allistair said.

  “I am,” Willy said with a too-quick smile. She looked at the skinny waitress and said, “Hold the B.”

  The waitress raised one eyebrow. “You want a BLT hold the B?”

  “That’s right. Just an LT,” Willy said.

  “Is it okay with you if I eat meat?” Allistair asked.

  “Sure,” Willy said.

  “I’ll have the liver pate with gluten-free toast triangles,” Allistair ordered.

  “What kind of bread on your LT,” the waitress said in a bored tone.

  “Surprise me,” Willy said.

  “Oh, I love surprises!” Allistair said.

  “So do I!” Willy exclaimed.

  “Do you want surprise toast triangles?” the waitress asked.

  “Yes!” Allistair said.

  ***

  I hate surprises, Willy thought. I hate surprises and I love bacon. My God, how am I going to do this? She almost caught me with the vegetarian thing. Willy was going to have to tread very carefully or she’d be found out.

  The waitress turned to go and Allistair stopped her by saying, “Wait! Um…is the pate made by Bohemian Jews? Please tell me it is.”

  “I really don’t know,” the waitress said in an “I don’t give a damn” tone.

  “Oh well, I’ll try it anyway. You only live once right?” Allistair said with a chuckle.

  The waitress walked away after doing a giant eye roll.

  Willy was shocked. Liver pate was bad enough but getting Bohemian Jews involved seemed excessively wrong. This woman was weird. She had only been around her ten minutes and didn’t think she could take any more. “Liver pate? Isn’t
that like spam for rich people?”

  “Spam?” Allistair asked.

  “No kissing you tonight, I guess,” Willy continued.

  “What?”

  “You always order liver pate on a first date?”

  “Why not?”

  “You sure you don’t want some corn nuts with that? Maybe some Funyuns while you’re at it?” Willy said facetiously.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Willy said, “Stinky food is kind of a boner downer, you know.”

  “Boner downer?”

  “Forget it,” Willy said.

  There was a moment of awkward silence.

  “So where were we?” Allistair said. “Oh yes, we were discussing toys. So…what was your favorite toy as a child?”

  “I didn’t have a lot of toys growing up. We were poor.”

  “Poor?” Allistair asked. “I thought you were upper middle-class. You told me in one of our IMs that your parents sent you to a boarding school in France.”

  Willy quickly backtracked. “Yes, but we started out poor. By the time I was in middle school we were rich. But when I was a little kid, it was hard. I had to make my own toys.”

  “Oh, how sweet,” Allistair said.

  Willy forced a smile. She didn’t know what was so sweet about making your own romper-stompers out of old Folgers cans and twine. Every time she fell there was a good chance she’d open an artery. “Being poor isn’t as romantic as you think it is. My best friend was a spoon,” Willy said.

  “Did you say a spoon?” Allistair asked.

  “Yep, a spoon.” Willy took the spoon out of her rolled-up napkin and held it up as a visual aid. “I named her Beverly. It was the only toy I had growing up on the farm. I would dig with her and draw in the dirt with her. I talked to her. I washed her and dressed her in Barbie clothes that I made myself. I slept with her beside my pillow. I even tied a string around Beverly and wore her around my neck.”

  “A string? Why?” Allistair asked.

  “I didn’t want to lose her. How else would I eat my soup?”

  “I see,” Allistair said in a tone of voice that meant she didn’t see at all. “But why a spoon?”